Bob Murray, Teacher
When I drove over to Murray’s home, Bob had to show me the damage that the storm at four AM had done to his flower garden. He and his wife Mary Jo were in Toledo the night the storm struck. As they came into Tiffin and saw all the damage, they were worried about their home surrounded by trees. At first things looked all right, then they saw that a sixty-foot maple had broken off at the base and fallen across their shade garden. Among other plants, Bob had thirty-four different hostas. The canopy crushed many plants, but when the limbs were all cleared away, many plants including rogersia, toad lilies and foam flowers had survived. But that area is now sunny and all the plants will have to be moved to a new location. They remodeled their house two years ago and most of the flower beds were put in then.
Bob has been our friend and colleague in the Biology department for years and I hope to acquaint our readers with this devoted teacher who has been at Heidelberg for thirty-three years.
Bob grew up in Lakeside near where his grandfather had a cottage. He especially remembers the members of the Toledo Audubon Society coming to Lakeside during the spring warbler season. Suddenly all along the shore, these people were looking skyward with their binoculars. An older woman in the community formed a Junior Audubon Society so the children there could participate.
Bob’s father graduated from Cornell in mechanical engineering. He was interested in sound and acoustic engineering and later he worked for the Lear Corporation on automatic guidance systems. His mother, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, played the harp professionally and later taught music in grade school.
Bob began his teaching career when he was a lab assistant at Albion College. He then went to Ohio State where he studied for his masters and later his PHD degree in Biology. He was a lab assistant there, too and he remembers David Stansberry, and John Price who were excellent role models for college teaching. He also fondly remembers Loren Putnam, his ornithology teacher.
He taught for five years at Ohio Dominican College in Columbus while he finished his PHD degree. It was there that he met Mary Jo.
Bob is known for his excellent rapport with students. He has been chosen Teacher of the Year by the students four or five times and once he was selected Heidelberg Teacher of the Year by his fellow teachers. I have sat in with my ESL students and I have watched him move enthusiastically around the room as he teaches. He is passionate about his subjects and relates to each student individually, knowing where their understanding is at the moment.
He has a collection of seventy different tee-shirts that he wears to class. Students look forward to discussion at the beginning of class centered around the tee-shirt of the day.
Bob says that a good teacher keeps him or herself open to learning from the students as well as teaching. In two more years Bob will be the teacher with the most years teaching in the Biology Department, and he has no interest in retiring.
One thing that has made teaching Biology at Heidelberg exciting has been the tradition of Biology Field trips. In 1970 Percy and Bob and others in the department went to a cabin owned by Dave Baker in the eastern mountains of West Virginia to explore the possibility of taking students there right after the close of the school year for a ten day field experience.
Then in 1971, the first student group set up their tents, dug latrines, bathed in icy Shaver’s Fork and studied ornithology, botany, geology, invertebrate zoology. Like the other professors that went along, Bob enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and getting to know and be known by the students in a primitive but beautiful setting.
Bob remembers sitting around the campfire at night playing his guitar and singing. Biology alumni always talk about their adventures on those trips when they return.
Later in 1986, Percy and Bob took Heidelberg students to southern Belize in a small village called Placentia. There they snorkeled and explored the coral reefs and also the tropical rain forest and Mayan ruins. They stayed at The Turtle Inn and always bragged about the tropical food they ate there.
After Percy retired, Bob and Susan Carty continued the trips to Belize. Turtle Inn has been sold and they are now stationed at The MarineTropical Research and Education Center out of San Pedro.
Bob spent a couple of months each year in the years 91-96 working on the National Geographic Survey of Mayan Ruins of Southern Belize. They have found over a dozen major sites.
Bob teaches Cell and Molecular Biology, Genetics, Developmental Biology, Human Medical Genetics and Human Reproductive Technology as well as General Biology and Zoology. In the late 70s he took a Sabbatical and traveled to the University of California at Davis to study cellular and developmental biology.
He also did research in molecular cell division. He was granted a leave of absence to continue this work for a second year, and he supported himself and his family with a grant from the California Cancer Association and part time teaching.
He led two tours with Heidelberg students completely out of his field. Taking advantage of a Global Initiative Grant, he and the students toured museums in London and another year they explored the Folk Music of Scotland.
Bob and Mary Jo have two grown children, Regan Leigh, who is studying for a PHD degree in forensic psychology from Central Michigan University. This summer she will present a paper at a conference in Sweden. She is now an intern in Toledo.
Shannon teaches history in high school in Oak Hills near Cincinnati. He and his wife have two children, Ian Gabriel, and Caleb Joseph and are expecting a daughter in the fall. He is completing his MS in school administration.
In addition to gardening, Bob loves playing tennis and racquet ball. Percy and I hope that he and Mary Jo have many more years of teaching at Heidelberg.
– Mary